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HOME
light box object, 180 x 75 x 40 cm
2006 |
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BIO-DATA
born in Iran
lives and works in Berlin and London
Education, Residencies and Architectural Projects
• 1976 -1979 studied graphic-design at the University of Teheran, Iran; studied architecture, urbanism, and Italian language in Perugia and Reggio Calabria, Italy.
• 1983 - 2000 works as independent architect on residential projects and competitions.
• 2001 (current) active in the fields of video art, photography, painting, drawings, installation,
Performances and community art.
• 2004 exhibition architecture and exhibition designer of "Entfernte Nähe. Neue Positionen Iranischer Kunst", Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (catalogue).
• 2004 fellowship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland/OH, USA.
• 2006 Vasl Lahore 2006 (residency), Lahore, Pakistan.
• 2006 Curator’s Choice architectural exhibition solutions company established with Swiss architect Phillip Von Matt.
Selected Exhibitions 2006
• It's been a long way, baby (solo exhibition) — Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland
• Krieg der Knöpfe "War of the Buttons" — Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal-Unteröwisheim, Germany (catalogue).
• This Land Is My Land (II/ Berlin) — Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin (catalogue).
• Busan Biennale - Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan Yachting Center, Korea. (catalogue).
• GLUB Installation and Film screening — Galerie Eigenheim, Weimar, Germany
• Appendix3a cooperative video and multimedia project by Automata and globalscreen.org, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• 100 TAGE=100 VIDEOS — Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany.
• Auflösung III - Realismusstudio — Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin.
• Voiler - Dévoiler / Hüllen - Enthüllen, curator Karine Vonna, Villa du Parc Centre d’art Contemporain, Annemasse, France.
• Labyrinth X - zu Rassismus und Ausgrenzung, Nikolaikirche, Rostock, Germany.
• This Land Is My Land, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Germany (catalogue).
• Berlintendenzen, La Capella, Barcelona, Spain (catalogue).
• International Artists Residency Exhibition, Vasl Art, Haveli Baroodkhana, Lahore, Pakistan.
• Lost In Space, 19th Annual Images Festival, Vtape, Toronto, Canada.
• dLux Media Arts international, the Middle Eastern Video Project, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia.
• Something in Common (solo exhibition), Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
• Almost Art, curator Osvaldo Romberg, Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, USA.
• Urban Creatures, curator Dorothee Bienrt, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland (catalogue).
• Nouvelles Collections (Collection Jürg + Ruth Nyffeler), CentrePasquArt Kunsthaus/ Centre d’art, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.
• Portraits - The View Behind the Make-up, Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
• Festival International de Film et Video de Creation Cinéma Empire Sofil, curator Nat Muler, Achrafieh, Beirut, Lebanon.
Selected Exhibitions 2005
• Exhibition of the 10 winning videos of the festival FIAV.05, Metrònom, Barcelona.
• Modell "Verpaßte Gelegenheit"-Symptoe der Überforderung, curator Sabine Winkler, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam, Germany (catalogue).
• In the Shadow of "Heroes", curator Sara Raza, ArtEast Social organization, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (catalogue).
• Real representation/representing the "real", curator Ulrike Kremeier, Arena/Glashaus, Berlin.
• Beograd nekad i sad, curator Marko Stamenkovic, Prodajna Galerija, Beograd, Serbia & Montenegro (catalogue).
• Come Fly With Me, online-video-exhibition on www.tank.tv, London (Sept 1st-Oct 15th, 2005).
• KILID (solo exhibition), former GDR-watchtower at Schlesischer Busch, Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben e.V., Berlin.
• Glub (solo exhibition), Hopkins Hall Gallery, OSU College of the Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus/OH, USA.
• Bologna Flash Art Show, Sofitel hotel, Bologna (catalogue).
• Glub Installation (solo exhibition), Mershon Center and Art Gallery, The Ohio State University, Columbus/OH, USA.
• Migratory Aesthetics (solo exhibition), University Theatre of the University of Amsterdam.
Travelling Exhibitions 2004/2005/2006
• Labyrinth X - zu Rassismus und Ausgrenzung, traveling exhibition in: Stadthalle Ludwigslust, Hagenow, Boizenburg, Dönitz, Wismar, Schwerin, Rostock; Germany (newspaper)
Selected Exhibitions 2004
• GLUB (solo exhibition), Case Art Studio Gallery, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland/OH, USA (catalogue)
• Entfernte Nähe. Neue Positionen Iranischer Kunst, curator Rose Issa, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (catalogue)
• Not In the Sky and Not on the Earth, curator Emil Aleksiev, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia (catalogue)
• i? (solo exhibition), PLAY Gallery for Still and Motion Pictures, Berlin.
• Schizorama, curator Antje Weitzel, National Center for Contemporary Art/NCCA, Moscow.
• La Sage-femme y Spiral Woman, Sala Municipal de Exposiciones del Museo de Pasió, Valadolid, Spain (catalogue).
• Just pLAy, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles.
Selected Exhibitions 2003
• Seat, permanent installation of the sculpture in the lounge of the Video-Forum at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin.
• The 2nd International Kansk Video Festival, Kansk, Russia.
• Fair Play video contest, PLAY_Gallery for Still and Motion Pictures, Berlin.
• Models + Frames 8: Überlebensstrategien für Untrainierte - The Winners Takes It All..., curator Sabine Winkler, Kunst- und Medienzentrum Adlershof/KMZA, Berlin.
Selected Exhibitions 2002
• The 1st International Kansk Video Festival, Kansk, Russia.
• Evolutionäre Zellen of the group "finger", Neue Gesellschaft für Bildene Kunst (NGBK), Berlin.
• Bush Video Night, open space, Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Selected Projects, Video Screenings and Presentations 2006
• Urban Art Stories, The OBS, news paper, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• IdentifiXation (The place where we belong) — Amsterdam City Theatre, Amsterdam, Netherland
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• Beckett & Company. Panel discussion and artist talk— Tate Modern, London, UK
• E-Flux Video Kiralama I²stanbul’da. Istanbul, Turkey
• Ästhetik der Migration — Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Weimar, Germany
• 10th International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, Jihlava, Czech Republic
• Evening of Film Screenings: Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.
• 13 Satellites of Lahore, Annemarie Schimmel-Haus, Lahore, Pakistan.
• EVR BUDAPEST (e-flux video rental), Mu½csarnok-Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary.
• The Built, Un-Built and the Un-Buildable, Artist Talk with Curator Sara Raza, PSi #12 /Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
• Spaces, Territories & Jigsaw Feelings. Tijanjin Academy of Fine Arts, Tijanjin/ China.
• Islam and video-art, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
• Projections + Invitation TANK.TV (UK). entrée libre, Grand Auditorium de la Médiathèque José Cabanis Toulouse, France.
• Black Deutschland, screening and panel discussion, Lichtspieltheater, Rostock, Germany.
• E-flux Video Rental, Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium.
• International Film Studies Conference - Magis IP, Gradisca d’Isonzo, Italy.
• Directors Lounge, screening, Galerie der Kuenstler, Munich, Germany.
• Seeing and Being Seen, Artist´s Presentation, Annemarie-Schimmel-Haus, Lahore, Pakistan.
• Diagnosticians, SPARK Video Canada Festival, Forest City Gallery, London.
Selected Projects, Video Screenings and Pres
FROM THE BANKS OF A RIVER CALLED HOME
Dieser Titel bedeutet den Wandel der eigenen Identität. Der Begriff ‘Home’ steht im Vergleich zu einem Fluss, der sich in steter Bewegung und Wandel befindet.
Zum anderen steht der Titel auch im Kontext einer berühmten indischen Weisheit. Sie besagt, dass man denselben Fluss nicht zweimal betreten kann.
KONZEPT
In meiner Arbeit möchte ich diejenigen hervorheben, die an den Rand gedrängt, unsichtbar gemacht oder in eine Art Selbst-‘Ghettoisierung’ gezwungen werden. Meist davon betroffen sind migratorische Gemeinschaften mit kulturellen Hintergründen, viele von ihnen aus dem Mittleren Osten, darunter auch Flüchtlinge.
Die Frage der Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit, als solches, zeigt sich mir als Situation, die ich aktiv in meiner Arbeit erkunde. Auch stelle ich mich oft selbst in meinen Video- und Fotoarbeiten dar.
SHARE FARANG
Shahre Farang’ erzählt eine Geschichte aus der iranischen Vergangenheit des Künstlers Shahram Entekhabi. Sie beginnt mit seiner Schulzeit, die schon früh geprägt war durch Auseinandersetzungen zur eigenen Identität. Er beschreibt seine Geburtsstadt Teheran mit ihren Besonderheiten, den Düften von gebratenen Zwiebeln und Waschwasser, ihren Geräuschen und den Bildern von alltäglichen Erlebnissen.
All diese Fragmente stehen heute in Bezug zu künstlerischen Arbeiten: Aus ihrer natürlichen Umgebung heraus abstrahiert und in diese Welt eingefügt.
Er stellt uns die Kuriositäten seines jungen Lebens vor, wie den Chemielehrer Azadi mit den nie enden wollenden Formeln, den Puppenteeparties der beiden Schwestern, seinen täglichen kleinen Romanzen mit den Schülerinnen der benachbarten Mädchenschule und seiner Mutter und den Nachbarn, deren Leben sich in einer täglichen Routine abzuspielen scheinen.
Die zentrale Rolle in dieser Geschichte spielt der Shahre Farang-Mann, der mithilfe eines kleinen Palastes Märchen von Königinnen und Königen erzählt. Viele Kinder stehen um diesen winzigen Palast und pressen ihre Nasen und Augen gegen die Gucklöcher. Der Künstler Entekhabi erschafft sich so seinen eigenen Kosmos. Die Stimme des Shahre Farang-Manns und das bunte Interieur begleiten ihn in seine Phantasiewelt.
Als sein Vater stirbt, endet auch die eigentlich sorglose Kindheit.
PRESS RELEASE
The City of Dudelange and the Centre d´Art Dominique Lang have the pleasure to invite you to the opening of the exhibition "From the banks of a river called HOME" by Iranian born and Berlin based artist Shahram Entekhabi. The artist will be present.
The exhibition title implies an identity in flux: The notion of home is compared with a river i.e. something in current movement and change. At the same time, the tilte reminds us of the famous Indian proverb that you cannot enter the same river twice.
In his work, Shahram Entekhabi choose to highlight those individuals who would ordinarily be marginalized, made invisible or forced into self-'ghettoisation' from the urban domain such as migrant communities and their culture, particularly the communities from the Middle East and their diaspora. The question of visibility and invisibility, therefore, has been a situation that the artist actively explores within his practice. Often, Entekhabi is performing himself in the various videos and photo based works. After a series of works where Entekhabi embodies various male migrant stereotypes (such as the migrant worker (e.g. Walkout, Alcazar et.all.), the "Islamic fundamentalist" (Islamic Star), the Kurdish freedom fighter (Mehmet), the Balkanese gangster (Mladen), the guerrilla fighter (Miguel) etc.), he recently became interested in the complex of human relations between couples of a migratory background and questions of human interaction (Who´s Afraid, Dead Satellites).
The central piece in the Centre d´art in Dudelange is a series of drawings entitled M, that show the naked body of the artist in often absurd, sometimes tragic interactions with a suitcase. The suitcase is a metaphor of travelling, movement and migration that plays a crucial role in a lot of Entekhabi´s works. In the drawings, all actions are related to the idea to get rid somehow of the stigma of being a migrant, at the same time it seems he cannot do it without the suitcase.
Going out from this - so to say - complex of self-inspection, two recent works about the impossibility of human relationship from a migratory perspective are included. While Who´s afraid does not include any dialogue but is a choreography of a love relationship that mugs between passionate love and bitter hatred, the work Dead Satellites tells the story of a Muslim couple, dressed up in western clothes, who are filled with hate against the "white" race in their environment. During the three chapters, "bint ‘amm" (inbreed*), "Jungle Fever" (after a film by Spike Lee (1991), that deals of the love and compassion between the races) and "Familycide" (an expression for a committed murder on relatives), the conflict potential between the partners gets worse. It evaluates into a bitter battle.
In addition, a number of objects are on show, such as Shahre Farang. Shahre Farang (Farsi for “chequered world”) is the name for a particular version of peep boxes in the Middle East that were in use for long centuries and up to the 1960s. The boxes offered the possibility to view an exhibition of pictures in the inside through a small hole and were usually travelled from village to village by the show-man. The box could be made out of metal in the shape of an oriental castle with several holes. It contained a set of pictures, which the show-man could move in the inside of the box by pulling the string. Common subjects included tales from "A Thousand and One Nights". The presentation was usually accompanied with a “talk show” that explained what was happening. For his installation Shahre Farang, Entekhabi rebuilt the traditional peep box in a contemporary version that comes along with no images inside but light and sound where a young boy´s voice is telling stories with a kind of autobiographical background about the artist´s memories of home.
Another object is the light box object Home that is a quotation from the film set of Stanley Kubrick´s masterpiece „A Clockwork Orange“ (1971). In the movie, the sign that is standing in front of the house of a writer appears two times: Once, before the protagonist Alex, a violent juvenile, and his gang entered the house of the writer to rape and murder his wife. A second time, after Alex submitted to a controversial experiment in prison to make criminals ill at the mildest suggestion of violence or conflict: After the experiment, Alex was attacked by the members of his former gang and could not defend himself as a result of the experiment. Heavily injured and desperate, he re-enters the house of the writer to ask for help without recognising it. Entekhabi transfered the sign into the context of migration, of home as a hostile or friendly place.
A fourth important part of the exhibition is the work Islamic Catwalk. Entekhabi´s works in general often deal with question of seeing and being seen, with visions of one´s own self and visions of others. Within the work Islamic Catwalk as well as works like tents and sacks, he is referring to the specific female dress code for women in the artist´s home country: After the Islamic revolution, the requirement for religious Shiite women to wear the black chador turned into the only possible public manifestation of women in Iran. At the same time, a censorship of female imagery in books and magazines in the public libraries and universities within the country had also begun. As such pictures of uncovered female heads and parts of the body were either cut out from the printed matter or covered with paint in order to transfer them into the only valid aesthetics. After September 11, the chador became the metaphor for radical Islamism, and, in addition, the symbol for the question of releasing women in the Middle East from male oppression. In a body of work that he began in 2001, Entekhabi started - in an ironic and humorous fashion - the act of mimicing censorship within his home country to "islamize" the Western fashion world through veiling all the female bodies and faces shown in the German edition of the magazine "Vogue", on "H+M" fashion posters and on a set of " Playboy" play cards, etc. Two cultures collide in his work: On the one hand, the series remind us of the fact that many women are exposed to these obligations. Inevitably, at the same time, we think of the "black widows" that we know from the news. On the other hand, the pictures also scrutinize the often doubtful ideals of beauty within the Western world. Islamic Catwalk is based on a sequence of moving images from the Robert Altman master piece "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994), namely the end of the movie that shows some kind of high end fashion show, with all the female models being naked on stage. Entekhabi was taking all stills out of the sequence (i.e. 50 images per second/ HD 1080i) and covered the naked female bodies with chadors. As a result, we see a video from an absurd Islamic version of a fashion show.
The work is co-procuded by Centre d'art Dominique Lang - Dudelange.
www.entekhabi.org |
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